I thought it was time for another Sunday review. First up comes Memphis Blues from Cyndi Lauper. It’s quite a departure from the Cyndi that I know, with Cyndi exploring the Blues style with great success. Granted I don’t know a bunch about Blues but it sounds good to me. It’s the kind of album you put on for a cool bunch of friends and a great dinner party.
Friday night saw me visit the wilds of suburbia to catch up with friends for dinner and DVD. Shutter Island was that DVD. So bad was that DVD that we never got to the end. Green screen effects were bad, story wasn’t that interesting and we just didn’t care.
Kylie has a new number 1 album on her hands here in Australia with Aphrodite hitting number 1 on iTunes on it’s first day of release. Now, some might say that Kylie could burp our national anthem and I’d buy it, the remixes and scour the internet for bootleg b-sides and they might be right. This album took a couple of listens to really take hold on me but I haven’t been able to write a review because it’s had me dancing with my hands in the air like I just don’t care. I love it. Closer and Aphrodite are my absolute favourites. Life is good when Kylie is releasing new music!
It’s Sunday morning here in Sydney, I’ve had my coffee and I’m putting off doing more packing for the move and I thought it a very appropriate time to review a couple of movies and a CD.
DVD - CIAO. Why is gay cinema SO consistently rubbish? There are thousands of great gay stories bogged down in terrible scripts and bad acting, tripping over cliches and awkwardness along the way. Ciao is another one that unfortunately fits into that category. The script didn’t actually go anywhere. It was an hour and a half of first date conversation. The premise of the movie is Jeff lives in Dallas and after the death of his long time best friend has to email people to let them know of his death. Adrea was supposed to be coming from Italy to meet Mark for the first time after meeting online. Oddly Jeff asks him to come regardless. Wooden acting is taken to new heights by the two leads but trumped easily by the token fag hag/asian girl/step sister. Avoid the movie unless suffering from insomnia.
CD - TRACEY THORN “LOVE AND IT’S OPPOSITE”. Remember Everything but the Girl? I do. Simple electronic mellow pop. Then Tracey went on to collaborate with Massive Attack and made some beautiful music. This month sees the release of her new solo effort. This album feels like reconnecting with an old friend on facebook. It’s familiar, there was no falling out to cause you to drift apart, you catch up online in a vague inoffensive way from time to time but the buddy era of old is past. It’s a comfortable listening album, but I doubt you’ll be catching up with Tracey every day.
MOVIE - ROBIN HOOD. This is a couple of hours of good old fashioned movie escapism. It’s movie making by numbers and Gladiator in England is good at what it is, swashbuckling underdogs making good. The lovable but inconsequential character dies, there’s Russell with a watery trail of blood down his face in a fast edited battle scene of epic proportions at the end. Don’t get me wrong. I liked it, but there’s nothing earth shattering here. Russell has proven true to form by acting well but storming out of a publicity interview because the journalist questioned his accent in the movie. Precious much? Cate Blanchett is stunning as usual and gives a great performance, but it won’t be her career highlight.
Sadly this is only open to Australian residents but I think it will be great. You need to make a 3 minute film sharing a safe sex message. Click here for all the details. I know there are amateur film makers out there. Safe sex is something that I’m passionate about and would love to know that the message is getting to the right people. Guys in their 20’s just don’t seem to care about looking after themselves these days. So get your cameras out and do us proud.
I know he’s only young, but after stacking on 30lb of muscle for this movie, I feel it would be remiss of me NOT to drool over Taylor Lautner. Check out the body on this guy! I watched Twighlight a few months back and while I liked it, I don’t really get the freaky obsession, but with New Moon featuring hot buff werewolves walking around with their shirts off, I just may buy into the hysteria!
Last night, I had no plans to go out and felt like a quiet night in so off I went to the DVD store to see what was out. I picked up two movies that were completely spur of the moment choices, neither of which I’d heard anything about.
Firstly I watched “The Nines” with Ryan Reynolds. Not at all what I was expecting which was a challenge since I had no idea of what to expect, but it totally took me by surprise. Not only is Ryan Reynolds totally my cup of tea, but the movie just kept me guessing and in the end wasn’t at ALL about what I thought it might be.
Secondly came a movie that actually had me sobbing at a couple of points. It was such a surprise package and totally blew me away. It was a movie starring (loosely used as he’s the main character but not for a large part of it) Daniel Craig of Bond fame, in a movie that is stylish, but not at the expense of a beautifully told story. Harry Eden plays the younger version of Craig’s character Joe, in a 70’s poor beachside town in England. David Bowie and Roxie Music provide the soundtrack in a very evocative and emotional movie. Check out the trailer below.
The clip I posted yesterday was indeed from the movie “Newcastle“. I went and rented it yesterday afternoon. It was perfect for the rainy, post Mardi Gras day we were having in Sydney.
Newcastle is a real city, a couple of hours North of Sydney, with a steel industry background and working class residents. The movie is really well shot, especially for a small budget movie. The cast are all spectacularly beautiful but can act as well. Having grown up in a rival “Steel City” south of Sydney, also on the beach, it’s an environment I know well. I think that might be why I found a lot of the guys really hot in the movie. They are the kinda guys I used to see all the time at the beach about the time I was hitting puberty and as I’ve theorised before, I think that’s about the time I locked in the kinds of guys I like.
Yesterday afternoon I found myself with no plans for the evening and a lot of my friends out of town, so I took myself of to finally see Australia. I wanted to see it on the big screen because Baz Luhrman always does such amazing visuals and I knew the Northern Territory scenery would be shown at it’s best.
I’d heard such negative reviews and reports that I was going into the movie with low expectations, and about twelve couples my parents age scattered through the cinema. It was such a pleasant surprise. The movie made me laugh, made me cry, had me a bit scared at one point and really cheering for the main characters.
While I’ve been critical of Nicole in the past, for her refusal to admit marinating in botox, she does a great job in this movie and I think she’s been very unfairly attacked for this role. Of course everyone loves Hugh’s character right from the start, because it’s right at the start that we see him throwing a bucket of water over that spectacular body in a way almost suitable for a playgirl shoot. Nicole’s character defrosts as the movie goes along and was she was fantastic. Brandon Flowers was incredible as Nulla, and I hope to god we get to see him in more movies over the years and not just as the token Aboriginal.
I’ve just walked in the door from seeing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. What a beautiful movie. Firstly the two leads are people I could watch in just about anything. Brad, we all know is stunning to look at and does a brilliant job of capturing the exuberance of youth trapped in the body of a frail old man and when he gets young and in love he is just physically stunning.
Cate Blanchett is just one of the most beautiful and elegant women around. From what I believe she did most of her own dancing in this movie and is just delightful to watch all the way through.
I watched The Tattoist last night expecting it to be a pile of rubbish. Certainly it isn’t going to win any Oscars or anything but it was actually very good. Jason Behr is so very very sexy and broody in this movie. I’d only seen him in one or two episodes of Roswell a few years back which didn’t last long here, but in the Tattoist he is buff, rugged, inked up to the max but has the most expressive eyes and face. He’s just damn delicious in my book.
My flatmate and I had another one of our Thai take away and DVD nights last night. I went and collected dinner and chose the movies. We are always keen to give gay cinema a chance but it so routinely craps all over itself. Last night was no exception. I hired three DVD’s, two gay ones, one of those French, the other from the US. The French one was just a shambles. A guy comes out, then for some reason sleeps with his now ex-girlfriend, who then bitches that he doesn’t look at her the same way he look at the guys he shags. No shit sherlock! The U.S. movie was so filled with cliches it was ridiculous. The over-the-top party boy slut, the very earnest and quiet monogamous couple, who are so boring it hurts, the fag hag, the lying rent boy, and the serious colleague who tries to challenge everything the slut believes in. It’s so good that we are making such progress in our portrayals on film. No wonder we have right wing religious folks condemning us to hell… it’s actually because of our bad cinema.
The third movie was an Australian movie called Gabriel. About Arch Angels coming to earth to fight it out with the fallen dark angels. It tried to be the matrix. It tried to be underworld, it tried to be intellectual. It was none of those things. It did however have Andy Whitfield as Gabriel in the lead role. He was far from the worst actor in the movie and damn if he wasn’t hella pretty to look at. The former model was the best thing in the movie, but sadly that’s not saying much.
Update: Sorry Yani, good point. The French one was called “You’ll get over it” or something and yes he had a brother who was a boxer. The U.S. one was “Four letter word”. The only good thing about that one was seeing David from Someone in a Tree in the nude yoga scene.
I’m having a very lazy Saturday today, partly because I’m still not up to full speed and partly because all my friends are out of town, sick themselves or busy. So I’ve just sat and watched an old Batman. I love the mythology behind superheros and their evolution. I think the appeal of Batman is that he doesn’t actually have a super power, just truckloads of gadgets, knowledge, training and passion.
It got me thinking. What would you want as your super power? Growing up swimming and at the beach I always loved the idea of Aquaman, but let’s face it, he’s a little average on dry land. I would love to be able to fly, it would really come in handy, especially given Sydney’s traffic problems at the moment. The other bonus is that you could get away with some bad food and not worry about your abs, they are built in to your costume. Handy.
I’ve just walked in from seeing the Sex and the City movie with some friends and I have to say I loved it. I really liked the fact that all the images that were leaked before it came out that were then supposedly part of a dream sequence, were not. But still things weren’t quite as they seemed.
The movie did make me cry several times, pushing all my buttons about never meeting the right guy, the supposedly right guy cheating on me, all that stuff that goes through the mind of the hopelessly romantic but perpetually single guy. Having said that, the first time I cried was during the wedding gown fashion shoot. I would KILL to be doing high fashion photography like that. STUNNING! And Jennifer Hudson was fantastic!
This is the trailer to a new movie called “Watch Out”. Matt Riddlehoover plays a guy who is basically in love with himself to the exclusion of all others. I know a few guys in Sydney like that, I wonder if they have blow up dolls with their photo on the face?
I watched “Shelter” this afternoon, starring Trevor Wright as Zach an artist who has sacrificed huge things to help his self absorbed sister look after her son. He finds himself in love with his best mate’s older brother who challenges him to go after what he really wants. It’s a beautifully told story and rings fairly true as a coming out tale.
Brad Rowe plays his love interest and does a good job although he seemed to be too hesitant in the love scenes. I cried a few times in the movie, first when Sean kisses Zach for the first time. It all just seemed so natural and right. As someone that constantly holds out hope for good gay cinema but is frequently disappointed, I was really happy with the way this movie was handled, even if they did use the same footage of Zach pushing his surfboard under a wave about 3 times!
So it looks like they are making a movie of GI-Joe starring Channing Tatum. Channing is one very sexy guy and I’ve posted about him a couple of times before, but when I think of GI-Joe, action hero superstar savior of the world, I think of someone a bit beefier. I’m sure he’ll do a great job and he’ll definitely look sexy. Who would you like to see as GI-Joe?
